Killing Che Page 8

  As Hoyle looked back at the front of the office, he realized the charge had been placed in a car across the street, an expedient and deadly means of attack. Car parts and shrapnel had peppered the front of buildings for a hundred meters up and down the street. Hoyle grasped how narrowly they had escaped. As adrenaline ebbed, he clenched his teeth and felt an odd tremor in his legs.

  Smith’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he surveyed the damage. White paint had been daubed on a wall nearby. It said: VIVA LAS GUERRILLAS. YANQUI GO HOME. A hammer and sickle was painted under it.

  “We’re going to need people. More agents,” Smith said. There was an edge in his voice. He was taking this personally.

  “That’s a bad idea,” Hoyle said. “We’re not going to beat this by pouring in bodies.”

  “What is it that you’re not getting here? We just got car-bombed.

  Hoyle flicked his head at the graffiti in the firelight. “Look at the hammer and sickle. It’s upside down.” He threaded his pistol back into its shoulder holster. “There’s been no Communist bombings before this.”

  “Then who put the bomb down?” Smith spat back.

  “Landowners, Barrientos, the army, take your pick. They make it look worse than it is. We panic and escalate.”

  From out of the rain came the noise of police cars and fire trucks.

  Hoyle touched Smith on the shoulder. “Let’s beat it.”

  They headed quickly down the alley and toward the back of the office. As the rain beat down, Hoyle realized for the first time that he was barefoot. Although he felt no pain, his right heel was putting down a series of crimson puddles as he walked to the Land Cruiser parked behind the back door. Very suddenly, his foot started to hurt.

  “I’m going back to La Paz, ask some questions,” Smith mumbled. “I can spread some dollars around…” He seemed almost to be talking to himself.

  Hoyle slipped behind the wheel of the Land Cruiser. Smith climbed into the truck with him. The rain still fell heavily, drumming on the roof until its sound was extinguished by the starting of the engine.

  “We don’t want informants,” Hoyle said. “We need people on payroll. Native speakers—people who can move between La Paz and Ñancahuazú with a very small footprint.”

  “Where are you going to get people like that?” Smith asked.

  “Miami,” Hoyle said.

  8

  THEY WOULD BE organized for movement like this: A vanguard column, led by Marcos, seconded by Pacho; Begnino would serve as the point element’s machine gunner. All Cuban officers. In this first column would be placed the most reliable of the Bolivians: Aniceto, Coco, Dario, Julio, Loro (though Guevara considered Loro somewhat more amusing than reliable). The center group, commanded by Guevara, would be mostly Cuban. Pombo and Tuma would serve as bodyguards and aides-de-camp, Urbano, Rolando, Ricardo, and Alejandro as cadres. Moro would accompany the center group as combatant/ physician and could be trusted to keep Guevara’s asthma medicines. The following Bolivians were assigned to the center column: Inti, Serapio, Chapaco, Léon, and Willy. The rear column would be commanded by Joaquin and seconded by Rubio. Braulio and Miguel would oversee nine Bolivian comrades: Apolinar, Pedro, Benjamin, Victor, Walter, Chingolo, Eusebio, Paco, and Pepe. El Negro, a Bolivian medical student, would serve as the rear guard’s physician.

  In the three columns were thirty-five combatants; slightly over half—nineteen—were Bolivianos. In each group was a solid nucleus of Cuban fighters, all experienced, and Guevara knew he could trust Joaquin and Miguel to act logically. On point, Marcos could be counted on to find trouble before it found them, and Joaquin, solid, dependable Joaquin, would be ready to support or retreat as the situation dictated. Guevara had made his dispositions well.

  On Monday the last of the food had been brought up from Camp 1 and divided as marching provisions among the men. Each column leader admonished the comrades that this was not a holiday ration but was intended for use on the march. Guevara personally laid down the penalty for breaking open the rations: two days without sleep and three days without food. Though an effort was made to evenly allocate the loads, the most onerous cargoes fell to the rear guard. Three mules and a mare were also assigned to the trailing column, the animals carrying crated ammunition, a small cache of plastic explosives, and the largest of the cooking pots.

  As the column leaders inspected the troops, Guevara took up his books and maps and walked back to his clearing. As he sat in his hammock, a dull sort of apprehension came over him. The feeling was hard to understand—plain in its effect but incomprehensible in it origins. He was satisfied with the preparations, and the men seemed happy. Why was he low? Some of the reason was physical. His asthma had circled him the last several days. He hadn’t needed to take the small, bitter pills Moro had given him—he’d managed by force of will to stave off a full-blown attack—but he felt the tightness in his chest and knew that worry was a ready trigger.

  Still hanging over all was the issue of Galán and the position of the Bolivian Party. Fucking Galán. Monkey-faced shit-eater. It would happen in due course that Galán would turn the Bolivian Party against them, actively against them, and there was danger in that. This peril was most acute early on. The Party would be split along the lines of conflict: Those embracing the armed struggle would be with them, and the prevaricators, the deviationists, the Galáns would be swept aside and blown away. The faint of heart were at least identified at the outset. The drawing-room revolutionaries would fall by the wayside; stalwart comrades would see that the time for revolution was upon them. Even now the first of the volunteers from the Communist Youth Organization had broken with Galán and would be arriving at the camps in the next month. More Bolivians for the Bolivians.

  There was still the issue of what to do with the Bolivian comrades Guevara had now. Some of them held promise, but others were already showing signs of becoming shit connoisseurs. There had been instances of tension between Cubans and Bolivians, nothing serious, but noted. It was natural that there would be some teething pains; the Bolivian comrades were being brought under revolutionary discipline, and for now that meant answering to Cuban officers. When there were successes in the field, there would be more volunteers. The force would expand, and Bolivians would eventually be appointed to positions of responsibility.

  But first Guevara must make good with what he had. Cubans and Bolivians had to be forged together into a cohesive guerrillo, and to do that Guevara planned a monthlong training march, a reconnaissance in force, down the Ñancahuazú and up the Rio Grande, perhaps west to the Masacuri.

  In truth, Guevara had no destination. The objective of the march was to reconnoiter the theater of operations and condition the men. There was, of course, the possibility of contact with the enemy, but that was not the object. Not yet. This was to be a training march.

  From the main camp, Guevara heard an argument involving the loading of the mules, Joaquin holding firm that ammunition crates be loaded last, so they might be unloaded quickly in case of need, and someone, Marcos perhaps, insisting that because they were heavy, they should be loaded first, close to the pack frame. Guevara ignored the words and the problem. The men needed this march—first as a trial and then as an accomplishment. There were maneuvers to be practiced, envelopment and ambush, attack and retreat, procedures for splitting up and then joining together. All of these evolutions needed to be practiced and practiced until even the most inept Bolivian could lead the columns. That would take time. Until then the hard country favored them, held them secure in its vastness. Kept them safe.

  Guevara took the journal and pen from his pack and wrote:

  The last day at camp. A bearing party cleaned out camp number one and the sentries were brought back. Antonio, Ñato, Camba, and Arturo will be left behind to guard the farmhouse and receive Moises and the volunteers when they arrive in the coming weeks.

  Guevara lifted his pen, staring down at the spidery handwriting tilted across the date book at his knee.<
br />
  He wrote a last sentence: I spoke to the troops, giving them final instructions about the march.

  In fact, he had told the men only that they were heading north and that the trip would last at least two weeks. In the absence of facts, rumor wafted through the columns, the Cubans knowing to expect one of Guevara’s pruebas duras, another hard test, and the Bolivians carelessly expecting to be back in camp after a fortnight’s walk in the woods.

  Everything is right, Guevara told himself, not proudly but to reassure himself. He put his journal back in his pack and snapped the cap on his pen. It’s time to get these people off their asses. It’s time to begin.

  9

  MR. VALDÉZ DECIDED to follow Miami station’s advice and bought a ticket to La Paz via New York. It would have been less expensive to travel direct to Panama, but he thought it prudent to follow the suggested route. Hoyle had mentioned in his cable that the job was “getting interesting,” which might mean anything—difficulties, extra pay, or the enchantments of the fairer sex. None of these possibilities troubled Valdéz, who had a pretty good idea what the work might entail, and when Hoyle asked him to forward “two sets of tools” via diplomatic pouch, Valdéz had required no further explanation. Four Samsonite suitcases had been air-expressed from Miami to the American embassy in Santo Domingo, then sent on to Bolivia by diplomatic courier. Valdéz could pick up his equipment at the embassy in La Paz at his leisure.

  Once into La Paz, Valdéz disposed of his suitcase—it was a prop filled with secondhand clothing—and meandered through the city. He enjoyed an early lunch of sopa de mani, creamy peanut soup, and sajta de pollo, half a chicken cooked with garlic, cumin, salt, parsley, yellow peppers, and onion. After the overwhelming lunch, Valdéz purchased a razor, toothbrush, and tooth powder. Leaving the pharmacy, he twice took public transportation and twice doubled back on his own route, completing a standard CIA surveillance detection protocol called a “two-island tour.” Satisfied that he had not been followed, Valdéz arrived at the American embassy at precisely 2:17 P.M. and was met in the lobby by a staff sergeant of the marine security detachment.

  Valdéz was led up two flights of stairs through the armored door and into the communications station, then into a steel-walled room where his luggage waited for him.

  The marine apologized as Valdéz unlocked the yellow nylon diplomatic mailbags that contained his suitcases. The bags had been deposited between the embassy’s code machines.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the marine droned, “I can’t leave you alone in the crypto vault.”

  Valdéz smiled. “That’s quite all right.” And in fact, Valdéz rather liked the Marine Corps. He would be the first to admit that he was a man of firm convictions, and that he enjoyed the certainty of absolutes. The Marine Corps dealt in moral certainties; for marines, things were either right or wrong, good or evil, and Valdéz appreciated that. He especially appreciated this simple and enduring philosophy because so often in his work things were anything but absolute.

  Valdéz opened the first of the diplomatic pouches and removed a cheap plastic-sided suitcase printed with a black plaid pattern. He threw the locks and opened the case. Inside were street clothes and a Dopp kit. Within an empty can of shaving cream was concealed a Mexican passport bearing the name Jorge Castillo Morales. Affixed to the document was Valdéz’s photograph, stamped with a Bolivian visa bearing today’s date. The visa listed his profession as petrochemical engineer. Tucked into the passport was a Jalisco driver’s license and business cards.

  These small lies bundled together were Morales’s “legend,” the tissue of fabrication that was to be Valdéz’s new identity. The phone numbers on the business cards were each appropriately backstopped, meaning there was an office in Jalisco and the telephone would be answered with the name of Jorge Morales’s nominal employer, Pemex Development S.A. If anyone bothered to call, the friendly people on the other end of the line would verify that Jorge was a longtime employee, a graduate of Oklahoma State University, and presently in Bolivia to consult on a petroleum natural gas injection project at Camiri.

  Like Hoyle, Valdéz was a CIA contract operator entering Bolivia under nonofficial cover, meaning that his presence in the country would not be sanctioned by the American government. This sort of cover, somewhat dramatically, was called “illegal,” although use of that word was reserved mostly for Communists who entered target countries under similar arrangements. His camouflage was more often called “civil cover,” or simply “nock,” the phonetic of “NOC,” or nonofficial cover.

  Valdéz knew that if he were to be arrested in Bolivia, the Mexican passport would allow the embassy, State Department, and CIA to deny they knew him. In some countries, for NOCs, the game ended at the end of a piece of piano wire. In Bolivia that bit of ugliness was unlikely—Bolivia was a staunch U.S. ally, if not an outright vassal. The country was a Partner for Peace, a greedy recipient of increasing amounts of American aid, money, and military assistance.

  When Hoyle contacted Miami for additional operators, it had been decided that the augmentation would go forward in the most discreet manner possible. For this reason, Valdéz had traveled under alias.

  In a second, larger suitcase were Valdéz’s weapons, held in place by cut blocks of Styrofoam. The sergeant watched intently as Valdéz removed and assembled a Colt model 609 Commando assault rifle. The weapon was intended for U.S. Special Forces fighting in Vietnam, and it was from there that Valdéz had come.

  “Seen one of those before,” the sergeant said. And he had, only once, at night, when a patrol of Rangers had passed by the sergeant’s squad on a hot landing zone. Valdéz’s weapon would eventually be called the CAR-15—it was the apex of American assault-rifle design, a shortened, faster-shooting M16. As the sergeant gaped at the rifle, Valdéz glanced at the decorations on his uniform blouse. They included a Vietnam service ribbon and a Purple Heart.

  “Where’d you get hit?” Valdéz asked.

  “Shot through the ass,” the sergeant said. “Both cheeks.”

  “I meant where in-country.”

  “Quang Tri. In I Corps.”

  Valdéz murmured an acknowledgment. His rifle assembled, he clicked on the safety and set about putting together his pistol, a 9mm Beretta.

  “You been over, sir?”

  “I have had the privilege,” Valdéz answered.

  When Valdéz looked up, the marine was staring. There was a distant, troubled look on the sergeant’s face.

  The marine said quietly: “Privilege? To be over there? You gotta be kidding me.”

  Valdéz looked down and was quite surprised to find the pistol assembled in his hand. He had put the weapon together without realizing it—an exercise conducted utterly by rote. He tried to say something, but his mind was blank. Suddenly embarrassed, he closed up the last of his suitcases, and the sergeant made a mental note: This motherfucker is out of his goddamn mind.

  MR. SANTAVANES FOUND it difficult to sleep. Once or twice lightning flashed through the drawn blinds and a whimper of thunder crept into his room, an oppressively furnished corner suite in a small, neat hotel on the Calle Loayza. Beside him, the girl snored slightly, breathing in and out, and Santavanes stared at the ceiling, which seemed an especially long way off when you were drunk. There was still the metallic taste of Singani in his mouth.

  When it starts to get light, I will wake her, Santavanes thought. But that could be a long time from now, longer than he could easily determine, because before he had the girl sent up to his room, Santavanes had hidden his wristwatch. Not all whores steal, he knew, and looking at the girl, he found it hard to think that this one would, but Santavanes did not believe in testing the goodness of others. That is why before the porter brought the girl along with a bottle of Singani, limes, and ice, Santavanes put away his watch. And now, lying drunk and sated in his bed, he did not know exactly where his watch was. I’ll find it in the morning, he thought.

  Santavanes pulled the blanket up. He was still
cold in his bones from the long truck journey from Peru. For most of the trip, he’d crouched in the back of a camión with about forty campesinos, pushed together and jostled as the truck lurched south, past the eastern shore of Lake Titicaca, then across the frontier into Bolivia. With the other passengers, Santavanes had simply stared back blank-faced when the Bolivian customs officer lifted up the tarp and shined his flashlight into the truck. The driver paid the customs officer a few hundred Bolivianos and Santavanes and the others were in, the driver hardly inconvenienced by the five-minute delay and the officers at the Desaguadero border post satisfied with a spongy wad of currency.

  The camión continued south during the cold night, and at a truck stop in Huraini, Santavanes went to the counter of the small café and asked the owner for his valise. It was waiting, having been brought to the truck stop two days earlier, and Santavanes asked for the use of a room to change. This, too, was ready for him.

  In the half an hour or so it took the driver to fuel the truck and refill the radiator, Santavanes disposed of his campesino outfit, a battered felt hat, dark pants, jacket, and sandals. Santavanes then removed from his valise a clean shirt, slacks, a brown wool suit jacket, socks, and a pair of brogans. In the shoes was tucked five hundred American dollars. When Santavanes returned to the truck, he simply handed the driver a five-dollar bill and climbed into the cab with his suitcase. For the rest of the two-hundred-kilometer drive into La Paz, they did not speak, the driver quite certain that his passenger was a smuggler and Santavanes content to cultivate that impression.

  For the next several hours, Santavanes had watched the scenery, which was reasonably beautiful as they passed beneath the snow-covered dome of Illimani and then into La Paz.

  In bed the girl stirred next to him, and Santavanes could see the outline of her shoulders in the small light that made it past the window blinds. He thought of waking her and making love again, but he knew this would involve some negotiation, perhaps even an ultimatum. That task was beyond his present level of enthusiasm, and at last he was content to fall asleep with his arms around her.